


Last Night Was Wrong, I Know

by thecopperkid



Series: so good at being in trouble, so bad at being in love [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Come Swallowing, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 20:24:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14268849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecopperkid/pseuds/thecopperkid
Summary: “Steve,” Billy says, and his first name sounds foreign on Billy’s tongue. It sounds nothing likeHarrington. Stevie. Princess.Suddenly his expression is grave. “Don’t. You don’t. You don't even mean that.”“I do, though,” Steve presses. “And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”*Steve has tried to forget about everything. Billy has, too. But life has a funny way of tirelessly thrusting them into each other's orbits.





	Last Night Was Wrong, I Know

**Author's Note:**

> Title snagged from Hinds' "The Club."

It’s almost been a whole week, and they haven’t talked since Steve snuck out of Billy’s room Sunday morning at dawn, long before any of the Fiji brothers had stirred from their respective caves.

He had fucked up. Their conversations had been so easy and free that night, even spanning as far back to the first time they’d actually hung out — dropping acid with the basketball team at Steve’s lake house during freshman year of high school. It was so natural talking to Billy; they could laugh all night recounting memories and passing the Fireball. Feeling brave, Steve was nearly cross-eyed drunk as he had asked under the flickering blue of the wall-mounted flatscreen, “Is this, like? Friends with benefits, or— ?”

Billy had noticeably flinched at the label. Then turned to stone.

So Steve pretended he hadn’t said anything, and Billy pretended he hadn’t heard. It was so _stupid:_ Billy clearly felt bad about it, because later, he didn't move away when Steve leaned in close enough to lay his head on his chest, and didn’t shake him awake when Steve fell asleep there.

Steve’s morning run alarm had doubled as his saving grace. No one was up at five o’clock to witness as he tiptoed down the stairs with a guilty pink impression of Billy’s necklace on the side of his forehead. The mark was proof that Steve couldn’t just watch Billy take the floor, had to sacrifice the bed and join him in a makeshift blanket nest as they passed out to the drone of a true crime documentary.

And now it’s _almost been a whole week_.

But see, Steve’s also been busy — most of his energy has gone into preparing for a huge presentation for his business class, an exam in food science next Monday (and it’s been really hard for him to concentrate on a fucking word on the lecture slides in class because _Dar_ always sits in front of him), and a project for astronomy due in a few weeks that he hasn’t even looked at yet.

So, no. He hasn’t thought about Billy. Definitely hasn’t even pondered the fact that he hasn’t received any texts from him since that morning they smoked, because why would he?

Steve’s clearly very _busy_.

Plus, it’s not like girls haven’t been texting him. They _always_ are. Eliza’s still trying to reschedule their sushi date. And of course, Nancy barraging him with her nervous inner monologues. By Tuesday at noon, he’s got his phone set to Do Not Disturb so he can deal with the messages when he gets around to it, otherwise he’s going to go Pavlov’s-dog-crazy when he hears the thing buzz.

It’s never Billy, though. Something in him really _wanted_ it to be Billy, so they could have this stupid altercation he could feel brewing below the surface. Billy was apparently unbothered by the whole thing, because he never once texted. So if it was going to be like that, Steve decided, then he just didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

But then Wednesday happened. He’d showed up to practice early that evening because the line at the coffee shop on the way there was shorter than he’d anticipated. The sky was creamy sherbet as the sun set, and it was warm enough to wear his basketball shorts right into practice, so he was feeling like it might be a good day after all.

Steve happened to pass by the infamous Camaro on his walk from the parking lot into the gym and caught Billy in the driver’s seat, his head thrown back against the seat, thick lips parted in a gasp.

A girl’s head bobbed between his legs, and one of his large hands was wrapped in her hair, forcefully pushing her down. Her unmistakable flowing curls told Steve she was Stephanie Burkhart, Cameron Hathaway’s girlfriend. Steve’s stomach twisted at the sight. He booked it out of the illuminated ring of streetlight before Billy could meet his eyes.

At practice, Steve and Billy didn’t look at each other once, not the whole time they squeaked their sneakers up and down the parquet floor, and Steve didn’t even bother showering after. Instead he clamored out of the locker room with his gym bag, still sweaty but now furiously texting back a slutty freshman named Sam.

He had invited her over that night for a quick weekday fuck, and there was no hiding that something was bothering him. Steve had pulled Sam’s long blonde hair too hard, pinned her to his bed on her stomach and fucked into her, with three fingers shoved to the back of her throat. He wouldn’t usually try manhandling a girl without asking, but he felt like he was losing control.

“You fucking like it when I choke you, baby?” Steve hissed aggressively into her jaw as she whined against the pillow. “Good girl, you fucking love choking on my fingers. Don’t you, baby?”

It was almost like he couldn’t hear himself speak, that he was echoing.

Sam hadn’t complained, had even said she liked the sex during, but she eyed him suspiciously as he caught his breath coming down. They’d fucked before, and he wasn’t acting like himself.

“Are you, like, okay?” she had asked, her tits bouncing as she wiggled her baby pink panties over hourglass hips.

The sad thing about it was that Sam was, by all standards, perfect — funny and charming and sexy. But Steve was detached already. In fresh clothes, flipping open his laptop on his desk, he turned his head to where she stood admiring herself in the mirror by the doorway.

“I’m fine,” he’d snapped, feeling attacked. “I’m just tired. From practice. So, what, are you gonna need a ride or something?”

Now it’s Friday night, _Almost a full week since we talked_ , he definitely doesn’t think to himself.

He’s on speaker with Nancy, in the car on the way to her dorm with a bottle of Yellowtail for her and Jonathan, and fuck it, he’s switching it up and had told his teammate Brad to surprise him. But it’s like he’s living in some kind of weird deja vu dream — the guy picked him up a fifth of _fucking_ _Fireball_. Steve plans to drink it, obviously, because he paid for it and he’s not a bitch, but he shoves it under the passenger seat so he doesn’t have to look at it until he gets there.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Nancy’s disembodied voice tells him as his blinker pulses at the stop sign. “We ordered you that lo mein you like.”

That’s like music to his ears, because he’s fucking starving after the gym, where he’d pushed himself too hard to overcompensate, to zone out.

“Thank God,” Steve says as he pulls onto the main road, where a few students are already in procession, walking to the frat parties. “I have had the worst fucking week but you might have just saved it.”

“Oh, speaking of, Sam said you guys hung out this week,” Nancy starts, seemingly out of nowhere, but Steve knows she’s been waiting to ask this for a while. He should’ve known Nancy knew Sam. Girls all just _know_ each other, and if you fuck one of them, it’s going to get around.

“Of _course_ she did,” he huffs. “What did she say? You think I’m a dick now, don’t you?”

“No,” she says quickly, raising her voice over the background noise because Jonathan has begun talking over his PS4, which he always brings over so he and Steve can play together. “She just said that it was… an _interesting_ night. I’ve chosen to redact her particular choice of words. Why, were you? Being a dick, I mean.”

“No?” Steve tries to decide. He’s taking the road that all the fraternities are lined up on, only because it’s the fastest route to the honors dorms, and he feels anxiousness tighten his chest as he gets closer to Fiji. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was in a bad mood.”

Nancy hums knowingly into the receiver. She’s versed enough in empathy to not push him on this one. She changes the subject to tell him about theater, how she’d embarrassingly forgotten her lines as Juliet at rehearsal this afternoon, but out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees the campus police chief’s car parked on Fiji’s lawn and he cuts her off.

“Nance, can you hang on for a second?”

“Oh, yeah, totally, we can just talk when you get here if that’s easier—”

“‘Kay, bye.” He reaches a hand between his legs to hang up the phone without taking his eyes off where Billy Hargrove is sitting in the grass by the side of the road looking away all stormy and defeated with his hands to his face, bathed in the flickering blue and red glow.

The Fiji sign stands proudly behind as Chief Hopper towers over him, and Steve wants to laugh because it’s so fitting, so fucking rich that Billy would get busted right outside on the lawn of the biggest shitshow of a fraternity on campus.

There’s no traffic on the road behind him, so he slows to a crawl and debates whether he should step in. Steve’s not in any debts to Billy, after all. But Billy’s gotten in a lot of trouble before, and he can’t watch him get kicked out of school or something. That would be bad for the _team_ because Billy is a great _athlete_. So based on this reason (and this reason only, he thinks), Steve reluctantly turns in to the gravel driveway and parks in the worn grass behind one of the brother’s hulking trucks.

He edges around Hopper’s car in time to hear a little of what’s going on.

“Look, Hargrove,” Hopper’s saying over the bass line bumping out of Fiji, one hand frustratedly touched to his temples. Billy’s been at school for barely a year, and of course they’re already on a first name basis with one another. “You’re acting like I enjoy meeting up like this. I don’t want to have to file a report on you.”

“So don’t fuckin’ do it,” Billy snaps back at him, glaring daggers. Now that Steve’s gotten closer, he can make out that Billy’s using what looks like a shriveled up napkin to dab at his bleeding nose, his red flannel is disheveled, and his blonde curls have fallen out of his usual bun. He sounds surprisingly coherent, but he looks totally fucked. “I told you. I didn’t start _shit_ . Hopper, _please_ . If I get in trouble for booze, the guys are gonna, like, black ball me. _Please_.”

Seriously? Billy Hargrove _begging?_ Steve had really thought he’d seen it all, but knows how bad it would be for Fiji if Billy got them fucked for furnishing alcohol to minors.

“You’re not going to the drunk tank, okay?” Hopper says. “Calm down. Your frat’s safe — you’re welcome. But I know Hathaway’s face didn’t beat itself in, and I’m sick of coming down here and having this conversation.”

“Um, Hopper,” Steve pipes up before Billy can vouch for himself. Hopper and Billy whip around in unison, looking equally irritated. “I can explain this, actually.” And he can. He knows what’s going on here, he can put two and two together. This fucking-some-guy’s-girlfriend fight happens to Billy way too frequently.

“Fuck off, Harrington,” Billy spits in an instant. He blows a clot from his nostril into the grass, then lodges the only clean end of the napkin up in its place and lolls his head back.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be, kid?” Hopper tells Steve tiredly. He sees right through Steve. He’s the golden boy on campus — the king. Steve has an essentially spotless reputation, passed down from his parents who donate to the school and are socialites in the community. Falling on his sword for Billy Hargrove seems like a waste to Hopper. “Get lost before you involve yourself in this. And _Christ,_ Hargrove, tilt your head forward, not backward, the blood’s gonna run down your throat and make you puke.”

“This is my fault, though,” Steve lies. Billy stares expectantly. Drops his head forward like Hopper told him, violently snorting blood. “I told him to hook up with this girl, and now her boyfriend is trying to kill him. What Billy did was kind of like self-defense. So if you want to write anyone up, it shouldn’t be him.”

Hopper actually _rolls his eyes_. He looks so done _,_ like he doesn't give a fuck as long as he can take his leave. Like he doesn’t believe Steve, not by a long shot, and he isn’t paid enough to mediate glorified teen drama. It’s Friday night; he just wants to get off shift so he can drink a few craft beers and meet the guys for a game or two of poker, Steve guesses. Hopper looks to Billy, who has a shit eating grin, and a dried trickle of blood from his right nostril.

“ _Yeah_ ,” he’s saying, so pleased someone is taking his side for once that he drops the bloody napkin on the ground in excitement. “That guy was seriously gonna kill me. Honest to God, Hop.” Billy lays it on thick like he does, crossing himself for effect, pausing at the end to kiss his necklace piously. And yeah, he’s definitely drunk.

“Don’t call me that,” Hopper says, indifferent. And like that, Steve knows they’re off the hook. “Harrington, get this idiot inside before I change my mind and take both of you in. And for God’s sake, Hargrove, head _forward_.”

Billy slurs, “Yes, sir,” but Hopper’s already stalked away to his car. They watch him turn off the bubble top and reverse into the street, in the direction of the station or maybe the strip club on the other side of town.

Billy does a decent job of masking the wobble in his legs when he stands up from the grass and takes off, too.

“Fuck, _wait_ ,” Steve calls, pursuing him. Steve already knows this is going to be a _thing_ , that it’s going to take all night. He’ll have to text Nancy after and apologize.

“No. Fuck off.”

“Billy, please,” says Steve. “I backed you up. Now you owe me.”

Billy stops in his tracks and turns, expectant. He looks so fucking _mean_.

“So? What is it? You want me to blow you ‘cause you got Hopper off my back?” He demands, wiping his nose across the back of his hand wetly, which leaves an uneven smear now that the blood has mostly stopped running, has become tacky. “I don't owe you shit, Harrington.”

“Dude,” Steve says as he edges near and gets a better look at Billy’s face. “You don’t look good.”

He’s being more honest than he probably should be. Trying not to piss off Billy was like luring a wild animal — one wrong move and he could chase him away forever or get himself fucking mauled. Still, being curt is the safest. Billy’s responsive to that.

“This ain’t nothing compared to what I’ve had before, _believe_ me,” he scoffs. Steve’s heard the stories. Billy might be referencing his weekly fistfights, but Steve knows the Hargrove family well enough to know it wasn’t only just Billy getting wasted and picking fights in the yard at Fiji. He’d show up to high school practice with a black eye sometimes, and the blanks were filled in when Dustin told him what Lucas told him, what Max told him first. “It’s just a little nosebleed. It didn’t even hurt.”

“I was talking about your eyes, too,” says Steve as he leans in to squint at Billy’s dilated pupils. Billy shrinks away from the attention, looking indignant. “They’re all fucked.”

“Are you really gonna fuckin’ grill me right now?” And there it goes, he’s pissed now. His voice is high and brittle with frustration. “So I was blowing some Xannies. It’s _Friday_. I didn’t know you were the Xanax police now. Look, I’m not gonna stand outside _my_ party explaining myself to you. I’m not gonna just _stand_ _outside_.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees. His hands are out like he’s trying to soothe Billy back down. “So do you wanna get out of here?”

Billy’s eyes are glazed over as looks back at the house in temptation. Rap is pulsing the house, practically shaking the walls, and a rainbow of lights undulates in the ground floor windows. Steve can see it in his face, that he just wants to vanish back into the crowd and shotgun beers in front of cute drunk girls, maybe slip his fingers under their miniskirts later.

“Uh, not _really_ ,” he says, like that much is obvious and Steve’s stupid for it.

“Come get food with me,” says Steve, not above a good old fashioned bribe. “You’re fucked. You can’t drive right now. But you wanna eat, I know you do. I’m buying.”

He just wants to make things up to Billy, he honestly does. He isn’t trying to hang out, or something stupid like that. Why would he want to hang out with Billy Hargrove? He doesn’t want to.

Billy huffs. But when Steve steps into the parking lot, he hears another set of shoes crunching gravel behind him.

Thirty minutes and one silent car ride later, they're under the glow of fluorescent lights in the coffee shop parking lot downtown. Billy’s mostly appeased, had made Steve stop to get him nachos and two chalupas at Taco Bell, a large fry at McDonald’s (“Taco Bell has fries now, Billy, let’s just get those, we don’t have to make a whole other stop—” “It’s not the fuckin’ same. You brought me here, Harrington, I want McDonald’s fries.”) and a black coffee at the local shop. He’s got sour cream on the corner of his mouth as he stuffs fries in. Steve watches in disgust, glad he’s finished his food already.

“Your music is so gay,” Billy says around a mouthful, in reference to MGMT buzzing over the speakers. He wipes his face on his sleeve. _Gross_.

Steve rolls his eyes, spins the sugar around at the bottom of his iced latte. The straw squawks at him against the plastic as he stirs. “Do you ever say anything nice? How about, ‘Thanks Steve, for driving my ass to three fucking stores?’”

“You gotta work for this, Stevie,” Billy says, all sloppy. “I’m not free.”

He’s about to tear into a hot sauce packet but it slips out of his hands, underneath the seat.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, palming blindly between his legs at the floor of the car, and something in Steve is already sinking.

The Fireball clanks on metal as Billy yanks it from where it’s wedged. He sets his food back in the bag by his feet in favor of it, looking like he struck gold.

“Aw, Harrington, you brought my favorite. You shouldn’t have. But I’m glad you did.”

He cracks the seal, swigs from the neck like it’s water and pulls off with a wet pop. Steve tries not to think about how that sounded. Tries to think about Billy’s mouth mashing up fries and tortilla instead.

“You’re gonna get me arrested,” Steve says as he grapples for the bottle. Billy swats at him. “Christ, can you put that away before someone sees? I think you're just _trying_ to go to the station tonight.”

“Whatever, _mom_ , I just want one more sip,” Billy’s haggling, beginning to chug again. He dries his lips on the sleeve of his flannel, stops what he’s doing when he catches Steve staring. “Why are you so worried someone will see us all the time?”

“All the time?” Steve repeats. He looks out of his window instead, watches as the teenager from the coffee shop struggles with all her body weight to wheel the trash out to the dumpster. He thinks of how he ran off on Sunday. “I just think it would be pretty hard to explain if we get caught with an open fifth in the front seat.”

Steve’s phone buzzes again where it’s sitting on the arm rest, and they both see that it’s Nancy, asking if he’s still coming. He flips his phone over quickly, doesn’t really know why he’s hiding it but it’s too late anyway. It has already struck a chord in Billy.

“You know what I think?” he starts. His tone sounds dangerous.

“No, Billy, I don’t know what you _fucking think_.”

“I think you think everyone’s always looking at you,” says Billy, leaning over the console between them, just smiling and smiling and smiling. Steve stiffens. “That everyone cares what you’re doing. But nobody here gives a fuck about you, Harrington. You peaked in high school and you still walk around like you’re the king. When you gonna let that go?”

“You wanna know what _I_ think?” Steve says, getting angry. Billy’s just _jealous_. “I think you’re fucking _nuts_. I think you’re a fucking douchebag, and I think we’re done here.”

Steve starts the engine, because he really tried tonight, he did, but Billy’s about to make another scene and it’s time to take his ass home.

“Oh my God,” Billy moans. “You’re such a little pussy bitch. Where are you taking me?”

“Back.”

“What if I don’t wanna go back?”

“Too fucking bad!” Steve bursts. “You’re the one that wanted to be at your fucking party so bad. You wanna party, Billy? You’re going, right now.”

Billy slumps against the window, not looking at Steve and still holding the Fireball between white knuckled fists as he watches fast food signs pass.

“Why’d you even wanna bring me out, then? So you could _ditch_ me again?”

“Billy. Come on—” Steve stops himself. Because he doesn’t know what he’s going to say. Because he _has_ nothing to say, and nothing can fix that he ran off like a fucking idiot with Billy’s necklace scarred on his face.

“Pull over,” Billy says evenly, eyebrows knit together. Steve doesn’t, because he assumes Billy’s bluffing, and they’re in the middle of traffic, coasting up to the intersection that turns onto campus. He looks at Billy in the passenger seat, the way his skin burns an angry red under the stop light. He looks serious. “Are you fuckin’ deaf? I told you to _pull over._ I need some air.”

Someone beeps behind Steve just as the light turns green and Steve swears he’s going to _fucking_ commit murder tonight.

They’re close to the empty parking lot alongside the river, where students usually go to do homework and yoga when the weather’s nice. The place feels seedy at night under the hazed orange streetlights. Steve reluctantly turns in before Billy actually launches himself from the moving car.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he tells him as the car comes to an abrupt stop. He means it. “I know that’s hard for you.”

The interior lights pop on, harsh as Billy wrenches the door open, slams it shut and storms to a picnic bench by the water. Steve’s plan is to drive away and leave him, because the walk from here to Fiji is short. But he’s afraid if he doesn’t babysit, Billy will decide drunk swimming is a great idea and accidentally drown himself. He wouldn’t forgive himself if Billy did something fucking reckless.

It’s actually kind of sad to watch. The wind has really picked up off the river, intense enough that Billy is a mess of flailing blonde curls where he sits on top of the table, feet resting on the bench. He’s impatient trying to light his cigarette, gives up after the fifth time not being able to get the flame to take. He slams the lighter on the table and drops his head in his hands pathetically. And okay, Billy’s a little bit melodramatic. Steve gets out of the car with a sigh.

Billy hears Steve sifting his duck boots through the damp grass, so he doesn’t flinch away or even look up when he feels Steve’s weight join him on the wood.

“Aren’t you cold out here, or something?” Steve tries. He hunches forward so his elbows rest on his knees. “You’re hardly wearing anything.”

The river rushes in the background. Billy shifts so Steve can’t see his face. And if he had just been shaking a from the cold just a second ago, well, he’s definitely not now that _Steve_ brought it up, tensing every muscle in his body to resist the instinct.

“I need air,” Billy says, like he hasn’t said that already. He makes a point of staring steadfastly in the opposite direction, into the abyss of the obsidian river. “Besides, isn’t your princess waiting? Byers is kind of a cuck, he probably wants to spitroast her with you tonight. You should go. Don’t let me stop you.”

“Somehow, I don’t think this is actually about Nancy,” Steve says. “So what the fuck is your deal?”

“Maybe you’d know if you hadn’t been avoiding me,” Billy shrugs. His voice is pitched up, that way it gets when he’s exasperated.

And alright, what he’s saying might be true, but it’s a two-way street. Billy had shut shit down Saturday night. Steve is used to girls playing games with him, he plays right back, but Billy’s delivery of mixed messages is on a whole other level.

“I wasn’t avoiding you,” Steve says through his teeth. He sits up straight. “I fucked up the other night, okay? Can you stop punishing me for it? I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have left.”

 _But I couldn’t face it,_ he wants to confess. He bites that part back because it sounds so guilty.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Billy snaps, getting up in Steve’s face. “Would you fuck off? You always fuck everything up. It was mindless, it was just _hooking up._ ”

Steve would be lying if he said that his tone didn’t feel the same as the dip in his stomach when he missed a step on the stairs. Still, at least Billy has turned to _look_ at him now, his thick eyebrows stitched together, and pupils blown too wide, flicking back and forth over Steve’s face.

He doesn’t know what comes over him, because that’s not the worst thing Billy’s ever said to him, and this is not something Steve would usually do, but he hasn’t been his usual self, so he just fucking _smacks_ Billy, _hard._ Right across his left cheek with a sharp crack emanating from Steve’s palm that’s barely recognizable to him.

Billy instantly recoils to touch the pink-flushing skin in shock, jaw hanging like he didn’t know Steve had that in him. It isn’t the first time Steve’s ever hit Billy, but it’s the first time since the days when they had acne and couldn’t drive or grow facial hair, and that alone feels strange and childish and wrong.

Steve’s an _idiot_. If Steve knows anything about Billy Hargrove, he knows what’s coming next.

“Oh my God,” he breathes. “I’m so fucking sorry, I just. I’m _so_ sorry, I never meant to.”

Drugs have little to do with the crazed look in Billy’s eyes this time. Steve’s braced for Billy to rearrange his whole fucking face when he sees it. Crusted-over blood in Billy’s nose just makes him look more fierce. Steve wills it to just be over already.

But they’re both just sitting on the table. Steve’s stuck staring for too long, waiting to get what he deserves, and Billy’s glaring back taking these deep, calculated breaths through his nose. Steve thinks maybe that’s new since high school, like he’s learned how to better control his anger.

“I _can’t_ ,” Billy finally breaks. He’s trembling and Steve can’t be sure it’s just the cold. “I wanna fuckin’ hit you. I wanna hit you _really_ bad, Harrington, you have no idea how good it would feel. But I can’t — because you don't do that, not to people you give two fucks about.”

Steve watches the trees shaking in the wind across from them, the way their branches look like big veins leading up into the night sky. So not only is he a fucking idiot, he’s apparently also the shittiest person ever.

“Billy, I’m fucking _sorry_ ,” Steve says again. “I don’t know why I did it, I’m sorry—”

“Would you stop _apologizing_?” Billy asks impatiently, creeping closer. It’s that whole thing where Steve feels like the tension is actually tangible, like there’s some invisible storm brewing in the space between them. Steve smells the familiar spice of cologne, and his cock fills out against the fabric of his pants, conditioned to respond. “It’s pissing me off. Besides, I know how you’re gonna make it up to me.”

Then Billy puts a hand on Steve’s and tugs it forward until Steve’s palm rests on his navel, fingers brushing over the little brown buttons of his flannel. He’s firm and sure as he guides it down below his waist, lower, until Steve can feel how hard he is, straining dully against denim. Which is crazy, because Steve’s tried this exact move on Nancy and girls like Nancy a hundred times, had always given it a shot even if he knew the girl he was with was out of his league. He’d revel in the way they’d make a sound of surprise when they touched his cock, like it was bigger than they’d even anticipated.

On the receiving end of it, it’s not nearly as smooth as he thought, because he can tell Billy’s desperate and about to lose his fucking mind, but he _likes_ that. He might call it _sexy_ , maybe, the way Billy’s kind of high and drunk and the way he keeps staring into Steve’s eyes with a nonverbal cue of, _Do you want me to stop? Is this okay?_

Steve wants to say, _Fuck, it’s so okay,_ but he thinks the way he conveys that by rubbing his palm against Billy’s dick is probably more effective. Billy’s body visibly relaxes at the touch, a cat being scratched in just the right spot. He lets out a breath Steve’s not sure how long he’d been holding, and they’re so close that Steve can feel the warmth on his face.

So Steve closes that space and catches Billy’s full lips in an open-mouthed kiss, tangles his fingers in Billy’s long curls to ground himself. It’s different this time. Steve tastes blood and salt and alcohol. He thinks he can smell sex on Billy’s face, like maybe he’d been eating that girl out before he got caught by her boyfriend, and jealousy pricks like a barb inside Steve but he’s too _turned on by it_ to be upset.

Billy’s reaching frantically between them with clumsy fingers as he unzips his pants. He slides them down his hips, raising up and deepening the kiss at the opportunity, and his flushed cock, sticky with precome, springs free before he sits back down.

And this part is really weird to Steve, because it’s Billy’s actual real dick in front of him, the way it curves to the side and the thickness of the head even more pronounced than when he’d seen it from the safety of his phone screen.

“You’re so hard,” Steve marvels to Billy. He runs his fingers down through blonde curls, experimentally gliding down to Billy’s balls before wrapping a fist around his cock. He pumps it. Billy’s breath hitches as he kisses down Steve’s neck, messy and wet. “Fuck, it’s thick.”

“You like my cock? You like rubbing me?” Billy says as he licks at Steve’s pale skin. He moans low when Steve spits in his own hand and strokes.

He’s a little uncoordinated as he fists Billy’s cock, because yeah, it’s just like jacking off, but it’s _someone else’s dick,_ and Steve can’t easily get over that. Billy winces like it’s too fast and intense. He reaches in between them, slowing Steve’s hand.

“Like this, baby,” he says, showing how he wants Steve to twirl his wrist a little on the upstroke. Steve’s cock jumps in his pants, steadily fattening up.

“Is this the way you jack off?” Steve finds himself murmuring a little nervously into the skin below Billy’s ear as he gets used to the rhythm. He feels Billy’s cock throb in his hand.

“Yeah,” Billy says, hypnotized as Steve works him. “Fuck, yeah, just like this.”

“What do you watch? When you do it.” He pictures Billy on his bed, stoned and shirtless in his boyish room, with his dick out and his phone in hand, coming all over his tanned stomach. He pictures how he probably has to suppress his breathy groans so the brothers won’t hear him.

“I like gangbangs,” says Billy. His chest is starting to heave. His necklace catches the light as it rises and falls.

“Gangbangs,” Steve says back. He rests his head on Billy’s shoulder as he watches the alien sight of his hand on another cock. Billy smells like spice and musk. “Fuck, why? Tell me why.”

“I don’t know,” Billy says feverishly. “Watching some slut take all those cocks. A bunch of guys just using her. Taking turns fucking her, using another guy’s come as lube. That’s hot as fuck.”

Steve’s so fucking hard now, can feel he’s got a wet spot growing in his Calvins. He wonders if Billy’s ever been involved in a gangbang with the guys at Fiji. He ruts against his palm through his pants, still rubbing Billy’s cock with the other hand.

“What’s the pretty boy get off to, huh,” Billy pants into Steve’s hair.

“Come shots,” Steve says. His head is swimming to keep up, overstimulated. He just wants to hump into Billy and come.

Billy groans, quiet in the back of his throat as Steve strokes him. His hips stutter. “So what you’re saying is, you like watching dudes come.”

“ _No_ ,” Steve spits. “I mean, yeah. But like, not how you’re thinking.”

“Seems like you liked watching me. I didn’t know you were such a voyeur.”

Steve doesn’t have to look up to know Billy’s all smug, maybe with his fat lower lip pinched between perfect white teeth.

“Is this part of your power trip?” he asks, and he’s over Billy’s act but he’s so fucking hard and sometimes people do stupid shit when they want to get off. “Fine, okay, I’ll play. You wanna know what I can’t stop thinking about?”

Billy grunts in response.

“About last Friday,” Steve begins, lifting his head this time to look in Billy’s glazed eyes. “How fucking hot it was watching you come. I keep replaying it when I jack off.”

Billy _loves_ that, Steve can tell. His face lights up, wolfish, like he wants to pin him to the table. Steve thinks maybe he might let him. Billy grabs Steve’s face and pulls him in to a kiss, aggressive enough that their teeth clack together. “You jerk off to me?” he whispers when they pull apart. It’s so genuine. “Holy fuck, that’s so hot. Do I make you come hard, baby?”

“Yeah,” Steve whines. “Always blow my load so hard, I soak the sheets.”

“Jesus, why aren’t we _fucking_ already?” says Billy breathlessly, laughing a little because it’s true, it’s fucking _stupid_.

Steve isn’t sure what to say to that, though, because he doesn’t know what all of it means. The past weekend, this right here — it’s all strange for sure, but it hasn’t been a big deal. Actually fucking Billy sounds like a _thing,_ one he doesn’t know that he's equipped to handle.

“I’m close,” Billy says, and he threads his fingers in the back of Steve’s hair. “I’m gonna come. Gonna come so hard for you, baby.”

“I want you to come down my throat, I wanna swallow,” Steve blurts, startling himself. “Can you? Like, make me do it?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” says Billy. He looks like he can’t believe this is happening to him. “Fuck, yeah, I can. Just. Yeah, like that. You’re always so good for me.”

He pushes Steve’s head down toward his cock and Steve lets him, bends over at an awkward angle in haste so he can put his lips on it. “I-I’m coming,” Billy hisses as soon as he feels the wetness of Steve’s mouth.

Steve keeps rubbing Billy at the base until he feels come spurt over his tongue, warm and thick against the back of his throat. Billy’s hips jerk upwards and he pulls Steve’s hair a little painfully, gasping all staccato and gruff as the orgasm hits him in waves. The come is a bitter weight in Steve’s mouth when he swallows it down.

Steve rights himself, and Billy’s still panting, smiling spacey at him as he pulls his pants back up.

And then they’re kissing. It’s less demanding on Billy’s end, no rush like before, just his full lips slick and teasing against Steve’s own. The suction Billy creates on Steve’s lower lip has his cock uncomfortably hard against his leg.

Steve _likes_ this. He likes Billy’s long blonde curls that Nancy would say he needs to cut, likes how he can feel Billy’s weight lifting calluses when his fingers slip up under Steve’s shirt, likes the way he can drink Steve under the table, even likes how disgusting he is when he eats fast food. He likes how Billy calls him _baby_ when he’s about to come. He likes _this_ too, he doesn’t want it to stop, and he doesn’t want to be in that place again tomorrow where he feels like he has to run away from something that he can’t stop himself from thinking about if he tried.

Steve has to pry himself away before his dick can think for him.

“Billy, we can’t keep this up,” he says, trying for firm but finding it difficult to do so when he can’t even catch his breath. “I’m not good at this. I can’t just — just dissociate like you can.”

“I’m not _dissociating_ ,” Billy says, defensive with his arms across his chest. He sneers the last word like Steve’s vocabulary is pretentious.

“What if I like kissing you,” Steve says. _What if that scares me,_ he doesn’t say. Is he still in middle school after all? Sometimes he thinks he might be. He feels at least developmentally behind.

“You’re human,” Billy says dismissively. He tries to lean in for a kiss but Steve dodges out of the way. “Come on, it’s fine. You know I won’t tell anyone about this, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You’re not hearing me,” says Steve, digging crescents into the clammy skin of his palms. Billy doesn’t understand that it burns his pride to even say this. He wouldn’t bring it up if he didn’t feel it. “I mean, what if I like kissing _you?_ ”

It’s so silent as Billy collects his thoughts that all Steve can hear is the river, endlessly rushing.

“ _Steve_ ,” Billy says, and his first name sounds foreign on Billy’s tongue. It sounds nothing like _Harrington. Stevie. Princess_. Suddenly his expression is grave. “Don’t. You don’t. You don’t even mean that.”

“I do, though,” Steve presses. “And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”

“The whole thing is, you can’t say that,” says Billy. He stands up and pockets the lighter that he left on the picnic table. “That’s the whole point, okay? Look, I don’t feel so good.”

There’s probably something Steve _should_ say right now. An interjection that could stop Billy from avoidant behavior. But he turns up with nothing, at least nothing coherent or meaningful.

“I got the spins,” Billy continues, a little antsy. “Seriously, I gotta get out of here.”

He’s stalking off back toward the lot, just a shadow now below the weak streetlight.

Steve doesn’t have time to get pissed because Billy doesn’t even make it past Steve’s car before he hunches over, hands on his knees as he vomits at the edge of the grass.

Being around this asshole is like a full time job, he swears to God. Steve hops off the table faster than he’d probably admit.

“Fuck,” Steve says, keeping a safe distance. “You didn’t seem like you’ve had that much to drink. Are you good?”

Billy peers up looking sullen. “ _Fine_ ,” he says, but he promptly leans forward and retches. Nothing comes out this time. He spits at the ground.

“Okay,” Steve says, feeling a little nauseous watching this. “Okay, yep, you’re getting in the car.”

“I don’t wanna. I can walk back to the house.”

“You’re coming back to my dorm,” he says, ushering a stumbling Billy to the passenger door. “You’re not going to Fiji. I don’t trust you. I let you in there, you’re gonna be doing coke off some girl’s tits and bumming drinks off people.”

Billy looks miserable and nearly fucking green as he gets in the front seat, and Steve thrusts an empty fast food bag from the floor into his hands.

“I don’t need you to take care of me, Harrington,” he glowers, accepting the bag anyway and leaning over it to dry heave.

With his arms on the roof of the car, Steve leans in to look Billy in the eye when he resurfaces from the bag. Billy wipes that damn flannel sleeve over his mouth again. “I know you don’t. I want to.” It’s true.

Steve lucks out twice on the way to his hall; first, because Billy miraculously holds in the contents of his stomach until he sets foot in the student parking lot. Second, because the nerdy R.A. on duty at the desk is essentially in love with Steve, and she ignores that Billy’s slumped over like a dead body in favor of asking if Steve wants to go to her sorority formal with her. He agrees if only to keep Billy from dying in the lobby.

Once they’re in the safety of Steve’s dorm, Billy’s already shirtless and spreading out in Steve’s bed like it belongs to him, laying on his back with his arms behind his head and his eyes squeezed shut. Steve just stands there and wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

He grabs his sleeping bag from the closet and begins methodically spreading it out on the floor, but Billy peaks his head over the side of the bed.

“You stupid asshole,” he says. His voice is hoarse with sleepiness. “No, get the fuck up here. Someone’s gotta make sure I don’t choke on my puke in my sleep.”

The twin bed hardly fits Steve on an average day, nothing like his king size bed at home, but somehow with Billy’s half-conscious body starfishing out across it, he still manages to sidle his way in. He turns his back to Billy and unplugs his string lights, perched on a tiny sliver of the bed, when suddenly Billy yanks him by the waist until they’re tangled around each other.

Steve doesn’t chance breathing, always feeling like he’s chasing a wild animal —  like he might scare Billy off.

But Billy kisses him on the forehead, a little slackly, barely even pouting his lips so it’s more of Billy pressing them there between Steve’s eyebrows.

When Steve’s heart stops racing enough, they fall asleep just like that.


End file.
